Very nice review, and as others have said, what a beautiful cat and such well-taken pictures, too! Based on your description of how this picture occurred, I take it you literally turned on the camera and pushed the shutter button. Or did you apply any settings (Night Mode, exposure modification, etc.) before taking it?
I also received my iPhone 12 Pro 256Gb Pacific Blue yesterday, and I mostly agree with your sentiments. It’s a stunning color. I had the 11 Pro Midnight Green and grew a bit weary of it over time - it began to look “dingy“ to me at points. This color does not give me that sense, and only time will tell if the same thing happens here. But I’m not anticipating that. The OP is right about the handling and feel. I remember thinking the iPhone 5 felt a little uncomfortable to hold as a result of the flat sides, but this phone is a pure pleasure to manipulate. And superficially speaking, I LOVE that the design language is now more unified with the iPad Pro!
Time will tell as far as performance goes. I can’t make any big assumptions yet because I think the phone is probably still setting up stuff / indexing in the background, and like every new iPhone I get, it’s a bit more sluggish in the first couple days. That always goes away in a day or two, and at that point, my experience is that there is a significant speed jump.
My biggest frustrations this year may have nothing to do with the phone. First, I always set up my iPhones as “new” and for the life of me, I can not understand why every time I do, certain apps like Apple’s Notes do not update themselves in the background. The only way I can get my notes to populate is by keeping the Notes app open, and the moment the phone goes into Standby mode or I change to another app, it stops updating. I’ve checked every relevant settting and they all appear to be correctly set. This is only a problem when bringing in the notes the first time; after they finally do all show, it seems to push updates as expected (if I create a new note on my iPad, it is immediately synced to the iPhone, etc.). It’s maddening to me why this seems to happen every year/every new iPhone. I have to assume it has something to do with the fact that millions of people are simultaneously hitting Apple’s iCloud servers, and it’s causing an intended or unintended limitation on automatic “push” of data to individual users.
Second, I have had a very mixed experience with this year’s crop of accessories. So far, the MagSafe charger is just abysmal for me. Using an Anker 30W per port USB-C Power Delivery charger, it charges so slowly that I have to believe there is something wrong with it. I would estimate about a one percentage-point increase every 10-15 minutes. It also seems to generate an inordinate amount of heat, too. I’ll give it a few more days to see if Apple provides more news about what’s going on here, but if nothing changes, the two I purchased will be going back.
I also disliked Apple’s clear case; I found it very hard to attach and detach from the iPhone and immediately began worrying about scratches while doing so (I tend to use the iPhone caseless, but always buy one case for times when I want a little extra protection).
The Apple silicone cases, on the other hand, seem really nice this year. They are easy to take on/off, feel really nice in the hand, have responsive and tactile buttons, and come in attractive colors. I bought the Product (RED), Kumquat, and Plum with the intention of keeping the Kumquat (or the clear one) and probably returning the others. However, the Plum is just gorgeous and it’s the one I’ll probably keep. And that’s with me having an inherent bias towards Kumquat because orange is my favorite color. All of them are great; but in the case of the Kumquat color, I couldn’t remove the image of “Circus Peanuts” (Google it if you don’t know what these are) from my head when this case was on my phone!
All in all, this is shaping up to be a year of great hardware for Apple (the Series 6 Watch is also phenomenal, IMO).
I don’t think I have the photographic skills of the OP, but here are a few pictures of our little guy, taken with the 12 Pro. No edits at all; I snapped the photos and uploaded them here. The first two are “Photo” mode; the third is in “Portrait” mode.
I’m also including a shot of the Graphite 12 Pro and Pacific Blue 12 Pro side-by-side. I couldn’t decide which one I would like, so I purchased both. Both are beautiful, and I struggled with the decision. The Graphite is gorgeous and is a perfect aesthetic match for my Graphite Series 6 and would have fulfilled my neurotic tendency to match stuff, but in the end, I couldn’t pass up the beauty of the blue.
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All in all, I’m excited about this year’s iPhone, but am extremely disappointed in the MagSafe charger. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this is a correctable issue, however.